Watch Women’s Reproductive Rights Get Taken Away in First Full Trailer for the AHCA, ahem, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

By Moze Halperin

Mar 23, 2017

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The just-shared, first full trailer for Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale begins with a bit of all-too-relevant (like, irksomely relevant, if you’re having one of your tired-of-TV-as-Trumpism-metaphor days) bit of voiceover from the series’ star, Elisabeth Moss. “I was asleep before, that’s how we let it happen. When they slaughtered Congress we didn’t wake up. When they blamed terrorists and suspended the Constitution, we didn’t wake up either. Now I’m awake,” she says, seemingly having plucked fragments from every 2017 liberals’ nightmares — except this description of how America fell is actually plucked from the history of the Republic of Gilead, as described by Margaret Atwood in the 1985 dystopian novel on which the series is based. Disquieting mindfuck, eh?!

The reproductive totalitarianism of the theocratic state within the series offers another parallel to our dystopian political reality: the main character, Offred, played by Moss, is a Handmaid — a woman who’s forced to have babies for infertile couples. And why, pray tell, are so many people infertile in the Republic of Gilead? Because of environmental problems!

So, as we await some really fun (!) activity in the House of Representatives, making decisions on whether Planned Parenthood and the Environmental Protection Agency will be vastly defunded (Planned Parenthood through the American Health Care Act; the EPA through Trump’s budget blueprint), we now have a TV show hyperbolizing the result of similar policies to look forward to, due April 26. In this trailer, we also see Samira Wiley (playing Moira), Ann Dowd (a very menacing Aunt Lydia), Joseph Fiennes (The Commander), Alexis Bledel (Ofglen), and many more. I bet your dystopian nightmares don’t have so many fine actors in them!

Beyond just how much this show does or doesn’t (but, really, does) parallel trends in today’s America, the trailer itself is chilling, and looks to be a pretty awesome adaptation of Atwood’s novel.